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Government posting wealth of data to Internet (AP)
Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 22 Jan 2010 | 3:38 am China: Clinton Internet speech harms ties with US (AP)
Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 22 Jan 2010 | 3:38 am Sony Ericsson cautious on market (Reuters)
Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 22 Jan 2010 | 3:27 am Critical Commons vs. Hitler: resource for free/open media and fair useCritical Commons has created its own entry in the great Hitler in the bunker remix meme. Steve Anderson sez, "The video is also promoting the fair use advocacy site Critical Commons, which is a fair use...Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 22 Jan 2010 | 3:18 am Critical Commons vs. Hitler: resource for free/open media and fair useCritical Commons has created its own entry in the great Hitler in the bunker remix meme. Steve Anderson sez, "The video is also promoting the fair use advocacy site Critical Commons, which is a fair use advocacy and media sharing site, funded by the MacArthur Foundation. This is currently the most radical media-sharing site on the open internet. Designed for media educators and students, Critical Commons makes high-quality, copyrighted media publicly available by placing it in a critical context and informing users about their rights under fair use."
Previously:
 Source: Boing Boing | 22 Jan 2010 | 3:18 am In India, Facebook Uses Google AdWords To Leapfrog OrkutDifferent territories demand different marketing approaches. Google, for instance, has been spotted taking the unusual route of promoting their search engine and Chrome browser with print advertising campaigns...Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 22 Jan 2010 | 3:13 am In India, Facebook Uses Google AdWords To Leapfrog Orkut
And now a reader informs us that Facebook is buying Google ads on the search giant’s India portal (Google.co.in). You can see some examples embedded in this post or on our tipster’s blog. It’s impossible to determine if this is new, but perhaps Indian TechCrunch readers can tell us if these just started popping up or if they’ve been running for a while. I’ve been trying out searches for people on a couple of other country portals but haven’t seen any Google AdWords campaigns from Facebook at first glance. We’ve contacted Facebook for more information. The move is fairly ironic for two distinct reasons: first, because Facebook has been struggling to become the leader in social networking in India at the expense of Orkut, which is of course a Google service (it depends on who you ask which one is effectively leading, but Facebook has definitely been making strides all around the world). Second: in June 2009, Facebook hired away Google’s Grady Burnett, who had been leading the Mountain View company’s AdWords business in Ann Arbor, Mich. He’s now Director, Global Online and Inside sales at Facebook. Also noteworthy: when you effectively click through on one of these Facebook ads, you don’t actually run a search query on the person you’ve been looking for – it just redirects you to the Facebook homepage where you have to renew your search to find him or her. Surely, there must be ways to improve that process? Have you spotted any Facebook advertising on Google in your country? Let us know. (Thanks for the tip, Ricky)
Supposedly there'll be two versions of the tablet, one offered on CDMA with Verizon's and the other on AT&T's GSM network. Interestingly, they suggest that Apple is still having those discussions, with nothing tied down firmly yet—which could certainly add weight to the speculation that the tablet won't actually hit shelves until June. But hey, it's Fox News. How 'bout those celebrity chests, eh? [Fox News] Source: Gizmodo | 22 Jan 2010 | 3:11 am OnLive Gaming Service Gets Lukewarm ApprovalVigile writes "When the OnLive cloud-based gaming service was first announced back in March of 2009, it was met with equal parts excitement and controversy. While the idea of playing games on just about any kind of hardware thanks to remote rendering and streaming video was interesting, the larger issue remained of how OnLive planned to solve the latency problem. With the closed beta currently underway, PC Perspective put the OnLive gaming service to the test by comparing the user experiences of the OnLive-based games to the experiences with the same locally installed titles. The end result appears to be that while slower input-dependent games like Burnout: Paradise worked pretty well, games that require a fast twitch-based input scheme like UT3 did not."Read more of this story at Slashdot.
The listed specs are exactly what Asustek president Benson Lin promised they'd be, namely a 3.5-inch WVGA resistive touchscreen, 5.0-megapixel camera, Qualcomm 7224 600MHz processor and GPS functionality. At least we now know that it's also sporting 512MB RAM and the same again for internal storage, with a microSD card slot for extra back-up funsies. As is typical with these Garmin-ASUS collaborations, the M10 will be tailored for drivers and will come bundled with a car holder. It'll be $435 when it goes on sale in Taiwan, in early February just like Lin said. As you can see from the branding on the base of the phone, it's under the Nuvifone range—looks like they haven't been too scarred by the reaction to the G60 and M20, then. [ASUS Taiwan via Slashphone via Engadget] Source: Gizmodo | 22 Jan 2010 | 2:59 am Sony Ericsson Q4 loss narrows 9 percent (AP)AP - Mobile phone maker Sony Ericsson on Friday said its loss in the fourth quarter narrowed 9 percent from a year ago to euro167 million ($235 million), as improved margins and lower costs offset a slump in sales.Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 22 Jan 2010 | 2:49 am China hits back at US Internet criticism
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 Telegraph.co.uk | China Rebuffs Clinton on Internet Warning New York Times WASHINGTON — Declaring that an attack on one nation's computer networks “can be an attack on all,” Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton issued a warning on Thursday that the United States would defend itself from cyberattacks, ... China Hits Back at Clinton on Net Freedom China condemns US call for unrestricted internet China Says Clinton Remarks on Internet Censorship 'Damage' Ties |
By Marisa Taylor, Reporter, The Wall Street Journal
Will children who grow up in the age of excessive text messaging see their spelling and reading skills suffer as a result?
Not necessarily, according to a new study from the British Academy. In fact, in an examination of schoolchildren’s texting habits, the kids who used more “textisms” — abbreviations such as “plz” (please) and “l8ter” (later) — showed higher scores on some spelling, phonetics, reading comprehension and other English language competency tests.
“We have found no support in our research for the negative media and public speculation surrounding mobile phone use, text language and its effects on literacy development,” wrote study authors Beverly Plester and Clare Wood, both psychology professors at Coventry University in the United Kingdom.
Read the rest of this post on the original site
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Remember the DotComGuy? In 2000, Mitch Maddox, a man from Texas, legally changed his name to that as he decided to live for one year year without leaving his home, buying everything he needed online and having it delivered to him. He didn’t make it.
Fast forward to 2010; While not quite that extreme, five journalists have agreed to go stay in a farmhouse together to see what kind of stories they can get using only Twitter and Facebook as sources. They will be stripped of their cellphones, and will have no other contact with the outside world other than the social networks. I’m not kidding. MSN has the full story here.
The goal here is to see just how good these networks are at actually providing information. Regular readers will know this is a topic near and dear to my heart as I’m a huge proponent of using these realtime information streams to gather information. Sure, the speed at which the information flows in doesn’t always equate to the complete story, but they’re great for watching events unfold before your eyes.
That said, there is often a need for other sources to verify the information being found in realtime, so using only these networks as the source of information should yield some interesting results.
The five people, from Canadian, French, Belgian and Swiss radio stations will be staying in France’s southern Perigord region for this experiment. It will last for five days. “They have agreed to be linked to the outside world only through Twitter and Facebook. No web surfing is allowed,” Francoise Dost of the RFP French-language public broadcasters association (which is running the experiment) tells Agence France-Presse.
They’ll be giving updates on their respective radio stations and apparently will be updating a collective blog. They’ll also obviously be on Twitter, which you can find here. The Next Web has more as well.
Keep an eye out for reports out of the south of France of celebrities being dead that are actually still alive.
By Caterina Fake, Co-Founder, Flickr
I love participatory media, collective knowledge systems, user-generated content and the like, and spent much of my life and career participating in them and making them. As I say in this post from 2005, the internet is built on a culture of generosity — the first web page I built was when I noticed there was no page on Nabokov and realized I could just make one.
Read the rest of this post on the original site
By Farhad Manjoo, Technology Columnist, Slate
Jim Marggraff, CEO of Livescribe, had been thinking for years about how to expand his company’s main product, the Pulse Smartpen, a clever gadget that records and digitizes both handwriting and audio as a user jots notes. One option: release a public programming kit that would let any developer publish add-on software for the pen, for users to install themselves.
Read the rest of this post on the original site
By Josh Silverman, CEO, Skype
Whether it’s a clip of “Tajik Jimmy” putting Bollywood soundtracks to shame, catching a friend’s wedding eight time zones away or working “side by side” with coworkers in another country, it’s all video. And it’s changing the way we communicate with one another.
Read the rest of this post on the original site
By Christian Rudder, Co-founder and Editorial Director, OkCupid.com
Hello, old friends. I am back from dark months of data mining, here now to present my ores. To write this piece, we cataloged over 7,000 photographs on OkCupid.com, analyzing three primary things:
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By Nick Bilton, Reporter, New York Times
Consumers are witnessing the beginning of a new war between computer companies. Instead of the Apple-Microsoft conflict of the early 1980s, this fight is taking place between Apple and Google.
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San Francisco hasn’t heard much from ZocDoc since its TechCrunch40 debut in 2007, but that changes next week. The site, which allows people to quickly see local doctors’ availability and make an appointment with just a few clicks, is finally launching in San Francisco on Monday.
So far ZocDoc has been focused on New York and Washington DC, growing users and new doctors by double digits, month-over-month since inception. Last month some 110,000 patients used the site to make appointments. The company decided it was time for a third city, opening it up to an online vote and San Francisco won overwhelmingly.
Votes aside, it’s a natural next step. San Francisco is full of Web savvy early adopters, and new transplants who are always trying to figure out how to find a new doctor. On a less rosy side, San Francisco also has the highest STD rates and some of the longest wait times to see a doctor in the country. For instance, it takes 36 days to see a dermatologist in San Francisco.
The problem is so bad that California has recently enforced legislation that requires doctors to see patients on a timely basis. ZocDoc–which specializes in scheduling same-day appointments– could be a great way to for doctors to outsource some of those requirements immediately. (If I were one of the pun-ier writers on staff, I’d say the launch is “just what the doctor ordered.”)
ZocDoc’s approach is a familiar one. Just like OpenTable finds a dining time in a certain neighborhood or an online travel company finds a hotel room for a certain price, ZocDoc integrates with doctors offices’ appointment systems, filling open time slots far more efficiently, especially since 35% of ZocDoc users make appointments after hours.
There’s a benefit to the city too. Some 40% of ZocDoc users schedule same-day appointments, which takes the burden off emergency rooms. The company estimates that it has saved New York some $500,000 in emergency room costs. And of course, that saves patients money too: The average emergency room visit is $700, versus $60 for an office visit.
And guess what? The company actually has a business model. Doctors pay an average of $200/$350 a month for the service. It has taken some work to get everything running smoothly, according to ZocDoc spokesperson Karsten Vagner. There are some 1,400 different practice management software systems out there and ZocDoc has had to integrate its site with each of them. But it’s a lean organization nonetheless. After recently doubling its staff ZocDoc still only has 35 employees.
Aside from an undisclosed angel round, ZocDoc has only raised $3 million to date from superstar investors that include Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, Salesforce.com founder Marc Benioff and Khosla Ventures. Vagner said there were no plans to raise more money, but I’d be stunned if another round wasn’t in the works.
As for further expansion, Vagner says to expect at least one or two more cities in the next eight months. New city launches can be uncertain for any local-oriented company, since local network effects matter more than anyone’s experience in New York or DC. But ZocDoc has additional chicken-and-egg problem: One of the core features is patient reviews, but it only allows patients who’ve booked appointments through ZocDoc to leave a review. That means the site isn’t immediately as helpful as it should be. That said, there is some clear momentum, at least on the doctor side: New York launched with a few hundred appointment slots, DC opened with 21,000 and San Francisco doctors have already posted 100,000 openings.
The question with ZocDoc has never been “Do we need this?” but rather “Can they roll it out fast enough to keep a first mover edge and build a sizable company?” The pace is slower than what we’ve seen from other local-oriented companies like Yelp and OpenTable, but healthcare is important and ZocDoc is smart to focus on getting it right in each place before moving on.
Three Words: Garbage… Pail… Kids
How did we miss this laser-scanning super robot vacuum?
The “Potato Chip Hand” lets you eat chips, protects your fingers from getting greasy (video)
Via Sony’s bio-battery: RC cars can now be powered by sugary drinks
Conan O’Brien, NBC reach deal: Conan leaves Tonight Show with $45 million, can start a new show later this year
SecondMarket opened up its private company stock marketplace in early 2009 and gave employees at hot startups something they never had before – an organized place to sell their stock even before the company went public or was acquired. For the first time the company is releasing information on private company buy/sell demand and completed transactions.
Most companies don’t SecondMarket one bit, at least at first blush. Companies don’t want random outsiders holding their stock before they’re public. And they don’t like some employees having liquidity events before others, it tends to screw around with morale. And there are also legal and tax issues. Stock options must be priced at “fair market value” or both the employee and company face tax consequences. The board of directors usually sets the common stock price at a fraction of the preferred price. But when there are verified third party purchases on places like SecondMarket, the companies have to use those sales as a guide. The result is higher priced options for all employees.
But we’ve seen a big evolution in startup stock dynamics over the last year. Companies like Facebook and Zynga have created controlled secondary markets for their employees to sell stock, generally at around 65% of the preferred price. Yelp seems to be doing the same. Giving employees a way to “take some money off the table” isn’t such a bad thing after all. Think of it as releasing some of the steam in the pressure cooker.
So about that data.
Second Market says that just over $15 million in transactions were closed through them in December 2009. The top company was Solyndra, with 38% of the transactions, followed by Facebook with 31%. Ebags was next with 13%. LinkedIn, Zynga and Tesla Motors each took 6% of the total. In all, half of the transactions were for “consumer products and services,” which includes website services like Facebook. Alternative Energy/Clean Tech took 44%, and software took just 6%.
The vast majority of completed transactions were for later stage companies that have raised at least three rounds of capital.
64% of transactions were for startups based in California, followed by New York (10%) and Boston (3%).
Part of the sky-high price around consumer website stocks like Facebook and Twitter is due to an imbalance of demand and supply. 70% of buyer demand is around those stocks, but just 20% of the overall supply is. Employees from a wide variety of startups want to sell their stock, but most of the demand is for the hot Internet stuff, and Tesla (which has 5% of demand).
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
 Reuters | Nokia Fires Back at Google With Free GPS on 10 Phones New York Times By KEVIN J. O'BRIEN Nokia began giving away professional GPS navigation software on 10 of its smartphones on Thursday, matching a competitive move by Google. The move deals a blow to the leaders in the market for specialized navigation devices, ... Nokia Sets Navigation Feature Free Nokia Gives Away Free, Lifetime Navigation App Nokia Challenges Google With Free Navigation Tool |
iGematria (Thanks, Mark Pescovitz!)Need an original idea for a speech at a Bar/Bat Mitzvah, wedding or other Simcha? iGematria is the perfect solution! Just enter the Hebrew name of the celebrant, and iGematria will instantly find the Torah verses or words that share the same Hebrew numerical value as the word you entered.
The update totally changes the formatting of articles to be more, well, Kindle-like, which is a very good thing. Your saved articles now look like the periodicals that are already formatted for Kindle. It also brings a welcome UI update: Navigating through articles used to be a chore of fighting through menus, but now can be done with simple clicks of the joystick.
Instapaper isn't a revolutionary app, but if you're into periodicals, it's a really nice way to get them onto your Kindle for off-line (of sorts) reading—and could be a taste of what's to come in the Kindle app store. [TechCrunch]
AFP - Motorola said that China buyers of its Android-driven smartphones can opt for local search engine Baidu instead of Google, the Internet giant behind the mobile software platform.
Stark Terror Was Squeezing at My Heart
Source: Boing Boing | 21 Jan 2010 | 11:11 pm
Clever work by Matt Robinson and Tom Wrigglesworth: they drew the same piece of sample text in several fonts at large scale using transparent Bic pens, then measured the remaining ink in the barrels to show the comparative consumption used by each face. Yes, you could probably write some code that calculated the area used by the faces described in their PostScript files, but where would the fun be in that?
Measuring Type
(via Kottke)
Source: Boing Boing | 21 Jan 2010 | 10:56 pm
"We the corporations" (Thanks, Rodney!)
We, the People of the United States of America, reject the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling in Citizens United, and move to amend our Constitution to:* Firmly establish that money is not speech, and that human beings, not corporations, are persons entitled to constitutional rights.
* Guarantee the right to vote and to participate, and to have our votes and participation count.
* Protect local communities, their economies, and democracies against illegitimate "preemption" actions by global, national, and state governments.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
 The Hindu | Meet the Maker of Apple's Other Tablet BusinessWeek The wait is almost over. On Jan. 27, Apple (AAPL) is expected to introduce a tablet device that Mac fans have awaited for years. Rumors that Apple may release a tablet date back at least a decade, to 2000, when reports surfaced that ... Apple faces big week with earnings, new product Apple wants a tablet in every home, a use for everyone Verizon, AT&T May Carry Apple Tablet |
Unusually, nobody doubts that it's a real wolf (as opposed to some sort of photo manipulation)—the controversy is that the wolf pictured may in fact be a tame wolf by the name of Ossian. The evidence: It's an exceedingly rare species, hardly ever seen in the wild; a wild wolf would be more likely to squeeze through the fence than leap over it; and, um, it looks like Ossian (I guess there are people out there who can tell wolves apart; I can barely tell that it's not my neighbor's dog). Jesus termed it "the ultimate FAKE internet whining."
The judges for the Natural History Museum have decided after awarding this photo the top prize that the wolf pictured is in fact a tame specimen, which breaks the rules of the competition.
Jim Brandenburg, a judge and a wildlife photographer with 45 years experience of taking pictures of wolves, marvelled at the image of the animal, captured so clearly and apparently hunting a farmer's livestock. He declared it "a masterfully executed moment", but having studied pictures of Ossian and Rodriguez's image, he is now "99.9%" sure it is a tame wolf, according to Carwardine.
So, internet, you win this round. Sort of. [The Guardian, thanks to everyone who sent this in!]
AP - Google Inc. appears to have regained its financial stride after wobbling through most of 2009.
T-Post, which appears to be a monthly magazine that brings a shirt with every issue, is the source of this fantastic find. All you have to do is put on one of the shirts, sit in front of a computer with a webcam, run T-Post's webapp and well...just watch:
Is it weird? Yes. Do I desperately want to try it out? Heck yes. [T-Post via Core 77]
awkwardstockphotos.com (via William Gibson).
Arnold Bocklin was a 19th century symbolist painter whose work influenced and inspired Salvador Dali, Sergi Rachmaninoff, Marcel Duchamp and H. R. Giger. Adolph Hitler owned eleven of his paintings and cited Bocklin as his favorite painter.
Click through the jump for a gallery of weird and wonderful art by this little known, but profoundly influential artist...
The following images come from this great Japanese site devoted to Bocklin's work. (Too bad I don't speak Japanese!)
Here are some other great 19th century symbolist and romantic painters to check out at the same site...
Henry Fuseli
Thomas Cole
Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres
George Frederic Watts
John Martin
Jean Delville
Louis Janmot
Evelyn De Morgan
Gaetano Previati
 Phones Review | On the Call: Google CEO on Apple relationship BusinessWeek Google Inc. and Apple Inc. have evolved from Silicon Valley friends to foes during the past year as they increasingly lock horns in the same markets, including mobile phones, computer software, music and advertising. The mounting competition prompted ... Hacker brings multitouch to Google's Nexus One Tech Talk: The changing landscape of the smartphone market Apple, Nokia dominate worldwide mobile market |
This is technically a DIY project, but I don’t know how many people are actually capable of doing this modification. What’s so scary about it? I dunno, shoehorning a Core Duo processor into a Sony Vaio UX17, one of the smallest netbooks available. Obviously this is a one off, so don’t expect to see it for sale any time soon.
The standard UX17 is a Core Solo, with 1GB of RAM and weighed about 17 ounces. The new improved version is a Core Duo U7700 which had to be hand soldered on to the motherboard. The modders also put a 128GB SSD drive in, but they were unable to increase the amount of RAM. There are a few drawbacks with this level of hardware in a netbook like this. The builders didn’t mention the battery life, and there’s no doubt in my mind that heat will be be an issue as well. Regardless of the problems, it’s still impressive that anyone can put that much technology in a such a small case. For the full write up, including how they did it, visit Tom’s Hardware.
The contestants: MacBook (unibody), pen and paper, iPhone (portrait), Apple Newton, Palm Treo 650 (hardware QWERTY), and Palm VX (Graffiti handwriting recognition software). There are some details that are a little troubling, of course; with handheld keyboards, speed greatly depends on how often you use then, and the tester has been using an iPhone as his main handheld for 18 months. A dedicated BlackBerry (or Pre) user would almost certainly do better with a hardware QWERTY than the tester did. That being said, it's pretty much impossible to have a perfectly fair test of this sort, and the tester clearly did what he could to eke out the best time possible for each device, so just take his results with a grain of salt.
The results: The laptop keyboard came out in front, which is no surprise, with the iPhone, Treo and pen and paper coming out essentially even, about 50% longer than the laptop. The two handwriting recognition devices finished way behind the pack.
I was a bit surprised, as was the tester, that the laptop keyboard didn't absolutely destroy the handhelds—just goes to show how good those little things really are. But you don't really care about that. It's Apple Tablet week, and what you care about is how this affects our predictions for the Tablet. And I'm not going to disappoint you.
I predict that the Tablet will not be made of ink and paper. You can quote me on that. [Gyford.com]
I try to stay active in the “video games cause this or that” debate, because usually it’s stodgy old men with conflicts of interest and think all games are Doom, talking about how a 15-year-old kid took a gun to school because Grand Theft Auto told him to. That’s easy to fight. But when they’re right, they’re right: it seems that kids in the UK are spending so much time indoors with their screens that they’re increasingly developing complications of vitamin D deficiency. In other words, they’ve got rickets.
Of course, we have to take this study with a grain of salt. No doubt the researchers were simply listing some of the contributing factors to what they see as a disturbing uptick in rickets diagnoses.
What can you say in defense? I mean, you do play video games indoors, generally, and video game hours are on the rise. Well, actually, pretty much the defense against other allegations works here: where are the parents?
In every situation where the kid is violent and plays violent games, where are the parents? When kids grow obese because they are getting no exerceise, where are the parents? And when a kid is essentially so malnourished that his bones lose their rigidity, where the hell are the parents?
While it would be accurate to say that the increasing popularity of games has led to more indoor hours, and more indoor hours leads to less vitamin D, and less vitamin D may lead to rickets, you kind of skip a few steps there. Like, say, the step where a parent gives their kid a Flintstone vitamin every day to make sure they’re getting their RDAs. Here in Seattle everyone takes D supplements because, let’s face it, where else are we going to get it?
So the increased indoor hours are kind of a fact of the new, online, games-and-media-oriented life that some lead. But that just means understanding the risks associated with that. If our kids were spending more and more time outdoors, there’d be an increase in sunburns and broken wrists, but somehow I doubt they’d blame it on Tag.
The idea is that an electromagnetic pulse would be used to disable a car's microprocessors, chips, and whatever other electronics are keeping it running. The final "cannon" system, built by Eureka Aerospace, will apparently a bit smaller and lighter than what we see in the video—it'll be suitcase-sized and about 50 pounds—and it will "stop cars in their tracks up to 656 feet (200 m) away."
I wish they tested that cannon on a moving car, but it does just what it should by disabling the car's electrical system. Only trouble is that even once the system is perfected and in use it can still be foiled easily: By using a pre-1970s car which doesn't "rely on microprocessors." Whoops. [Flight Global via Pop Sci]
Make found these wonderful floating space robots designed to fly in formation in zero gravity. How do they do it? These things, called Spheres, use compressed air to spin in place – but not as fast as you see here.
Obviously these things will eventually tell us that we can’t go outside the ship to check out the broken-down harvester, but we’ll ignore them and then find out something terrible. Get used to them while you still have time!
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
 Ars Technica | Special-Purpose iPhone Accessories: Where Are They? Wired News Perhaps Apple is getting ahead of itself. Even as the company plans to announce its “latest creation” on Jan. 27, one of its last creation's key features — the ability for special-purpose accessories to communicate with iPhone apps ... Parental Control glitch gives kids access to App Store porn How to Get Started in iPhone App Development Want new apps for your Android or iPhone? Here are the best directories |
Everyone is awaiting Apple’s tablet device. Some people (like me) won’t shut up about it. Others (like Paul) won’t shut up about shutting up about it. And while no one is exactly certain what its main use will be, there are no shortage of signs pointing to a definite role as a new way to consume written media. And several old-school publishers seem to be tripping over themselves to get on board the device as print media continues to wither. Personally, I’m excited about the possibility of a resurgence of long-form journalism. And while I’m skeptical as to just how well any device can change our growing collective desire for faster content over better content, I hold out hope because of the way I currently use my Amazon Kindle.
The Kindle, while not the Apple Tablet, is an excellent device for doing one thing: reading. And when matched with the super-fast bookmarking service Instapaper, it’s perhaps the ultimate long-form article reader. And an update this week made it ever better.
On Monday, Instapaper creator Marco Arment announced that he had significantly upgraded Instapaper’s support for the Kindle. This update made articles saved to Instapaper and transfered over to the Kindle (either wirelessly or by USB-sync) more Kindle-like, which is to say, formatted in a way more much like periodicals are when bought on the device itself. That means that you can now use the Kindle’s buttons to more easily navigate through Instapaper articles you’ve saved to read on the device.
Previously, you had to go through a series of rather laborious clicks to reach an article, and even more to get back to the main menu of articles to pick a new one. Now, you simply use the Kindle’s stick to navigate forwards and backwards between different articles. (When you’re on a selected article you wish to read, you still use the standard “Prev Page” and “Next Page” buttons to read through them.) There’s also a new “View Sections List” to see a complete table of contents for all the articles you’ve saved to read. Arment also made a change so that only the most recent Instapaper articles are shown on your main Kindle screen, while old ones are moved to a different folder — something which stops a huge amount of clutter on your main screen if you fall behind in your reading (as I often do).
Arment notes that with this new formatting and organization, reading Instapaper articles on the Kindle is now he favorite way of consuming them, even beating his excellent iPhone app. And I have to agree. This combination of Kindle + Instapaper is a killer application for the device — and it’s available right now before the Kindle’s official support for apps (announced yesterday) is even in place. If an online article is over a few paragraphs, I now automatically use my Instapaper “Read Later” bookmarklet to save it and send it over to my Kindle for reading when I step away from my computer. And now it’s easier than ever to do that.
As I said, this use of the Kindle + Instapaper gives me hope for what Apple can deliver in terms of a reading experience with the tablet. And I see it as proof that the core concept of the tablet-as-a-reader can work. The Kindle will likely retain one big advantage: its e-ink is easier on your eyes (similar to paper) than a backlit screen (much like a computer screen), which the tablet is likely to use. But the tablet will likely offer colorful graphics and interactive elements that the Kindle can’t possibly match. Not to mention that as a touchscreen device, it will almost for sure beat the pants off of the Kindle’s button + stick navigation — just as the iPhone does.
Despite the aforementioned announcement of Kindle app support, I find it hard to imagine that the device will ever get anywhere near the type of apps an Apple tablet will likely bring with it. The Kindle is simply too slow and too well, monochrome. I suspect Amazon may change both of those things this year in direct response to not only Apple’s device, but the several other devices that will hit the market this year in time the great tablet war. But for now, the Kindle remains the way to read online content offline. At least until next week, it is the tablet king.
I don’t care how you feel about magician David Blaine. Watch the TED video after the jump where he tells the story about his journey to break the breath holding world record. It’s fascinating and he’s actually a good storyteller. But be warned, you’ll probably spend the next 20 minutes watching the video and gaining respect for David Blaine. I did.
Section: Communications, Cellphones, Cellular Providers, Smartphones, Mobile
Why is it that every time a picture of an unannounced product leaks to the web, it always seems to be taken with a camera they’ve had for like last decade? Well, whatever the reason, the HTC Bravo joins that list. Or at least what we suppose is the Bravo. It looks like the Bravo when we compare it to the pictures in the leaked product portfolio we had last month.
What makes this exciting is the specs this phone is supposed to have. To quote the article above:
The Bravo sports a 1GHz CPU, a 3.7-inch touchscreen, capable of HD 720p Video, and included is a 16gb MicroSD card
The timing for this leak is appropriate as well since the phone was speculated to be released in April of this year. This is the HTC phone I am most excited about; except of course the Nexus One but really the only difference between the two is that the Nexus One has a trackball.
Full Story » | Written by Greg Billetdeaux for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article »
Finding a case for your computer is easy. Finding one that unique and still protects your computer can be a whole different story. Sure, leather is nice. Neoprene protects really well, and there are assorted other products that will protect your Mac Book, but they all look the same. Here’s your chance to use something that’s custom and unique – the BookBook. Based on the concept of hiding in plain sight, the BookBook case resembles an antique leather bound book, aged and distressed by years of contact.
Of course, the BookBook is hand distressed, but instead of it happening over years, it happens rather quickly in order to make it a marketable product. Still, once the cover is zipped closed it pretty much looks like a book. The zipper pulls are intentionally designed to look like a bookmark, the outer shell is leather that’s been distressed to look aged. To the causal observer, it looks like a book. I like it, I just wish they made one for netbooks.
The BookBook case is available for the 13 inch or 15 inch MacBook for $79.99.
[Via Gizmodo]
Apparently those cars are powered by energy "generated by using enzymes to break down glucose found in sugary drinks" such as sodas, energy drinks, or fruit juice. One 8cc dose of such a liquid will keep a toy car running for 60 minutes and the higher the sugar content, the faster the cars will run.
This leaves two questions: When can I play with one of these and which soda will make it go the fastest? [CrunchGear]
Picture by Paxton Holley
 Globe and Mail | Tablet Wars: Amazon Adds Apps to Kindle Wired News Amazon has announced that it will open up the Kindle e-reader to third party developers, allowing applications, or what Amazon calls “active content”, to run on the device. What kind of apps could run in the low-fi Kindle? ... Amazon Opens Kindle To Developers Don't Bet Against An Amazon Kindle Apps Store Revolution Dear Amazon: Kindle Apps Won't Beat Tablets |
Charles Phoenix writes:
This is not an art installation in a snooty, big city gallery or museum. (Although it could be and should be.) This is the perky polka dotted wall of a sunshine state souvenir stand dressed with dozens kooky characters. They are to coconuts what tiki gods are to palm tree trunks. Each is hanging there just waiting to be bought, bagged and taken to a new, more permanent home like a patio, tiki bar or rumpus room. Each one has been carefully carved, painted and finished by hand then imported from the exotic island it came from for our pleasure.Coconut heads on pegboard, Florida, 1960Together on the wall they're certainly mesmerizing and nearly hypnotizing. They look at you every time you walk in the room. No two are exactly the same. Each has his, (or her) own personality. I'm not sure that today they would all pass the test of political correctness. Which one would you choose? Or do you just want them all?
Yeah, this is likely the best thing you’ll watch today. That is, of course, if Borderlands stole the last few months from you.
There are people beta testing OnLive out there, and of course after our various looks at the remote gaming service (and my repeated statements of skepticism) we try to keep up to date. PC Perspective has a nice, lengthy write-up of the beta, which you should read in its entirety if you’re particularly interested. However, the reduction of PC Per’s sauce is this: for certain games, and for certain gamers, it may just be a good solution. But for power players it just isn’t an option.
Of course, this is a beta service and someone outside of the beta area (adding a little bit of latency), so you can expect things to improve, but also consider that as more people join, the further OnLive’s system is stretched.
Some points worth noting:
Some quotes from the conclusion:
In my testing I found that games that were slower paced, or at least had slower paced input mechanisms, played well enough that I could be fooled into thinking I was playing on a modestly configured local gaming system.
..If you are an avid PC gamer you will likely be very disappointed by the experience, both in terms of image quality and input latency
I think it’s a promising service, but right now that’s mainly what it is: promises. Right now I don’t want to rely on them or Comcast when I want to play a sweet new game. However, for many people it would be worth it just to have access to a few games at all times with the guarantee that they’ll play at least decently. Hopefully OnLive can keep that promise.
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Electronic-book readers are red-hot. After a blockbuster 2009, during which an estimated 5 million devices were sold, a new batch of e-readers are waiting to burst into the spotlight.
The latest generation of devices are easy on the eye, lightweight and packed with some nifty features such as the ability to take notes, make lists and — for some — even watch video. They also offer far better battery life than any netbook or notebook, often come with an unlimited wireless connection for downloading new books, and give you access to libraries of e-books that can top a million titles. At the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas this year, there were so many e-readers that they had their own special section carved out on the show floor.
But will the category remain as hot as it is now?
E-readers, as we know them now, are at a crossroads. Next week, Apple is expected to announce a new tabletlike device that could also be used to read digital books. It’s expected to have a color screen, not the monochrome E Ink display found on most e-readers. Apple is reportedly talking to publishers to bring e-books and magazines to the device.
Meanwhile, other computer manufacturers are showing tabletlike devices, which are also based on color LED or OLED screens.
A device with a color screen could really change the landscape. Add the ability to watch video, play games or download apps — which most e-readers can’t do — and e-readers could start to look pretty primitive by comparison.
Still, e-reader manufacturers have made a lot of strides in recent months. Amazon has even added an app store to the Kindle.
But before you decide to buy a Kindle, Nook or Sony Reader, flip through this gallery to see what will be in stores this year.
And keep in mind that an array of touchscreen tablets just might render the entire category obsolete overnight.
Above: Plastic Logic
The Cadillac of e-book readers, Plastic Logic’s Que proReader is a gorgeous but expensive device that promises to give you a “paperless briefcase.” The Que, which is targeted at business users, has an 8.5 x 11-inch touchscreen display and the ability to handle a range of documents such as Microsoft Word files, PowerPoint presentations, Excel spreadsheets, digital books, PDFs, magazines and newspapers.
The Que can even sync with your Microsoft Outlook account to pull in e-mails and calendar for display on the device. Feature-wise, it’s difficult to beat the Que. But the price tag is enough to make most people gasp.
But if you want one, be prepared to open your wallet wide.
The 4-GB version of the Que with Wi-Fi and storage for about 35,000 documents will retail for $650, and an 8-GB version, which includes 3G connectivity from AT&T, will cost $800. The Que will start shipping mid-April.
Photo: Jon Snyder/Wired.com
Section: Web, Web Browsers
Mozilla Firefox 3.6 has finally arrived a few hours ago! You can go on and update your browsers to version 3.6 now. I’ve had some issues with addons incompatibilities, such as the IEtab, but everything else is fine so far. I’ve noticed a slight improvement in performance since updating my Firefox.
Just to recap, Firefox 3.6 offers the all-new Personas feature, where you can switch themes without restarting the browser, a plugins updater (a security feature; outdated plugins such as the Adobe Flash Player may contain security holes), improved stability (less crashes from usage of third party software), improved performance (better Javascript performance, browser responsiveness and browser startup time), and the “world’s best implementation” of HTML5 audio and video support.
Read [The Mozilla Blog]
Full Story » | Written by Cheng Hung for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article »
Short version: Razer’s newest is more right-hand-oriented than ever and has a couple extra buttons. But while it may fit some hands better than the Death Adder, I don’t think it’s a definite improvement. That said, it’s worth a look if you haven’t found “your” mouse yet.
Features:
Pros:
Cons:
Full Review:
I’ll try to keep this one short, since many of you are familiar with the strong points of Razer mice: great looks, nice tracking, standard software for macros and customization, and so on. Razer mice are great, that’s established. But choosing the right one can be the difference between dominating a server and ragequitting with a sore hand. Fit and button placement are everything. So although I feel they’ve pretty much reached the pinnacle of mouse engineering with the Mamba, I happily concede that the form factor may not be for everyone. The Imperator takes the design of the Mamba and Death Adder and exaggerates it a bit, with results that may or may not be for you.
As you can see in my artfully composed product shots, the Imperator has a slightly different contour than its closest cousins. Look at this shot of the Mamba on the right (click for full size) and compare with the header image.
The “hump” of the mouse looks higher but it’s actually about the same, though with a more semicircular curve as opposed to the rounded angle of the Mamba. This means it meets your palm a little earlier and your index and middle fingers sit higher. On the other hand, there is now a little shelf for your thumb — it’s not very big, but it lends itself to a more relaxed grip. It’s for people who move the mouse more with their arm and wrist rather than using minute movements of their fingers, which is my way of doing it. On the far side of the mouse there is no shelf, in fact there is a bit of a waist, so there isn’t really a place for your ring finger and pinky to rest. This was probably my biggest ergonomic issue with the mouse: I ended up with those two fingers squished together along the very edge of the mouse because there was no place for them “upstairs” as it were.
I can see my description is inadequate; I’ll put together a short video. Here you go:
So, as I also addressed in the video, the thumb buttons slide back and forth, depending on where your thumb naturally goes to when you take it off its little shelf. This is a great development, although the thumb buttons are noticeably softer to press than the others. Nothing problematic, but I much prefer the big, fixed, clicky buttons of other mice.
There are two buttons in the middle of the mouse now, which it seems obvious to set to DPI up and down, but with Razer’s on-the-fly sensitivity (hold a button down and scroll) they feel redundant, and aren’t easily accessible for other functions. They’re too far back on the mouse to hit without moving your hand, so they can’t be for random stuff like minimize or double-click. The Mamba has two buttons like this but they’re to the left of the left mouse button, which worked out much better than I thought it would.
Verdict
So at $80 the Imperator is roughly twice the cost of a Death Adder, and $20-30 less than a Mamba. And of course there are other mouse companies out there, too — a G500 is actually a similar shape to this, now that I think of it, and it’s certainly a good mouse (and a bargain too at under $50). While I can’t say the Imperator excels in any way, it’s a perfectly decent mouse, just not suited to my style and also it seems like it’ll have a revision coming down the pipe some time soon as they tweak the shape a little further.
Everyone is familiar with the traditional EKG – you lie in the hospital bed, the leads connected to your body, as a machine is recording your heart rate and other vital statistics. But what if it was all wireless? What if you didn’t need to be in the hospital stuck in bed to be monitored?
The Japanese website Nikkei’s Tech-On! reports that engineers are developing a small, portable, and most importantly, wireless EKG system. Designed to run approximately 3 days on a charge, the device will communicate wirelessly using either a wifi or cellular connection.
[Via Medagadget]
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
![Screen shot 2010-01-21 at [ January 21 ] 2.59.13 PM](http://www.mobilecrunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/Screen-shot-2010-01-21-at-January-21-2.59.13-PM.png "Screen shot 2010-01-21 at [ January 21 ] 2.59.13 PM")
Like this – except, you know, with cell phones.
If you were planning on buying two Verizon Palm Pixi Pluses (or, if you’re feelin’ nutty, one Palm Pre Plus and one Palm Pixi Plus), get excited. It looks like you’ll be walkin’ out of the Verizon store with a bit more cash than you expected.
Yesterday afternoon, Palm sent us a note to confirm the pricing of the Pixi Plus and Pre Plus – which, as we expected, will set you back $100 and $150 respectively. Tucked inside that same e-mail, however, was one little detail we overlooked.
Turns out, Verizon’s continuing their ongoing trend of buy-one-get-one deals. Anyone who buys a Palm Pre Plus or a Palm Pixi Plus between January 25th and February 14th will walk away with an extra Palm Pixi Plus in tow. You’re not getting something for nothing, of course: it’s a mail-in rebate deal, so you’ll have to front the change up first. But hey – that’s $99 bucks back in your pocket eventually, right?
Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Oracle (ORCL) said this morning that it has received unconditional regulatory approval from the European Commission for its acquisition of Sun (JAVA). Below, the all-hands memo Sun CEO Jon Schwartz sent to employees following the announcement.
Believe it or not, it’s been more than nine months since Oracle first announced their intent to acquire Sun in April, 2009. And the ‘interim’ period has been tough on everyone–on our employees, and our partners and customers. Thankfully, that interim period is coming to an end, with regulatory approval from the European Union issued today, and only a few hurdles remaining–before Oracle formally expands beyond software to become the world’s most important systems company.
Even though we’re not quite across the finish line, I wanted to leave you with a few final thoughts.
All in all, it’s been an honor and privilege to work together. In my more than twenty years in the industry, the last thirteen at Sun, I’ve had a chance to work with and around an enormous diversity of companies, from every sector you can imagine. I can say with conviction that Sun’s people have always stood apart as the brightest, most passionate, and most inspiring. I’ve never had a bad day in my thirteen years for one very basic reason–I’ve always been surrounded by the best and brightest individuals I’ve ever come across. That’s been an honor and privilege, for which I’m enormously thankful.
Technology from Sun, alongside our employees and partners, have changed the world. We’ve opened markets, elections and economies. We’ve helped build the world’s most important and valuable businesses. We’ve played a key role in discovering new drugs, in bringing education and healthcare to those in need, and supplying the world with an incredible spectrum of entertainment, from smartphones to social networking. I doubt any company has had such a significant influence over the way we see or experience the world. I once told Scott McNealy he was the Henry Ford of the technology industry, making remarkable innovations accessible to anyone, and creating an immense number of jobs around the globe for those that made use of them. I can’t begin to tell you how proud I am of my association with that cause and the people behind it, and the value we created for ourselves and those that exploited our innovations.
I also know we’ve had more than our share of very tough challenges. Amidst the toughest market and customer situations imaginable, I’m proud we’ve always acted with integrity, with a sense for what’s right, and not simply what’s expedient. Over the years, I’ve heard time and again, from those inside and outside the company, “I like and I trust Sun.”
Building that good will is something to which you’ve all contributed. And you have every right to be very proud of it.
Make no mistake, it’s been an enormous asset.
So, to the sales and SE teams across the world who continually give their all to bring the numbers home–thank you for the trust you’ve built with customers, and the results you’ve delivered. I hope you’re prepared to have the wind at your back, you deserve it.
To the service professionals who every day build, maintain and run the world’s most important data centers–thank you for your excellence and discipline, 7×24.
To the professionals who run the functions and processes that are the company’s spinal column–thank you, we’d be paralyzed without you.
And lastly – to the engineers and marketers who’ve fostered a perpetual belief that innovation creates its own opportunity – thank you. You’re right. Innovation does create its own opportunity. Like Oracle, we’re an engineering company in our heart and soul, our potential together is limitless.
Now many of you know that I came to Sun when a company I helped to found was acquired in 1996. I’ve also led, and been a part of many, many acquisitions at Sun, both large and small. From those experiences, I’ve learned one very clear lesson–the single most important driver of a successful acquisition are the people involved–and how committed they are to the new owner’s mission.
And the most effective mechanism I’ve seen for driving that commitment begins with a simple, but emotionally difficult step.
Upon change in control, every employee needs to emotionally resign from Sun. Go home, light a candle, and let go of the expectations and assumptions that defined Sun as a workplace. Honor and remember them, but let them go.
For those that ultimately won’t become a part of Oracle, this will be the first step in a new adventure. Sun has a tremendous reputation across the planet, well beyond Silicon Valley. It’s a great brand to have on your resume. We’re known as self-starters, capable of ethically managing through complexity and change, for delivering when called upon, and for inventing and building the future. With the world economy stabilizing, I’m very confident you’ll land on your feet. You’re a talented, tenacious group, and there’s always opportunity for great people.
For those that have roles at Oracle, may you start with a clean slate, ready to take on the myriad opportunities ahead. With the same passion and tenacity for Oracle’s success that you’ve had for Sun’s, and a renewed sense of energy around executing on a far broader mission. There is no doubt in my mind you, and Oracle, will be remarkably successful, beyond the market’s wildest expectations. But it’s important you come to work thinking, “Sun is a brand, Oracle’s my company.” Don’t look for ways to preserve or dwell in “how we used to do things.” Look for ways to help customers, grow the market, and improve Oracle’s performance.
Sun is a brand, Oracle is your company.
And to that end, with nine months of getting to know them, I’ve found Oracle to be truly remarkable, led by remarkable people. From Larry on down, they understand the enormity of the opportunity before them, and they’re more than prepared to execute on it – across the board. I’ve seen their commitment and focus, now they need yours. I’m confident you’ll give it the 10,000% effort it deserves–and we’ll all see the end result.
So thank you, again, for the privilege and honor of working together. The internet’s made the world a far smaller place–so I’m sure we’ll be bumping into one another.
Go Oracle!
Jonathan
[Image credit: igrec /Fllickr]
Twitter has just implemented a change that may well have a massive impact on the service. The company has revamped its highly controversial Suggested User List, in favor of a list of Suggestions based on topic. That’s big news in and of itself (before Twitter’s suggestions were not categorized), but there’s also apparently no way to add all of these users to your account at once. In other words, members of the SUL will likely see their user growth counts take a big hit. You can try out the new suggestions page for yourself here.
Update: Twitter employee Josh Elman has just posted about the change on the Twitter blog. One thing worth pointing out: these lists are now generated with algorithms, and will be updated regularly. If the algorithm decides a certain user isn’t appealing to new Twitter members, they may be removed from the list:
We’ve created a number of algorithms to identify users across a variety of clusters who tweet actively and are engaged with their audiences. These new algorithms help us group these active users into lists of users by interests. Rather than suggesting a random set of 20 users for a new user to follow, now we let users browse into the areas they are interested in and choose who they want to follow from these lists. These lists will be refreshed frequently as the algorithms identify new users who should be suggested in these lists and some that are not as engaging to new users will be removed.
We’re still playing around with the new suggestion feature, but here’s what we’ve gathered so far. First, it looks like members of the old SUL have been transitioned over to the new format. There are twenty categories, covering everything from Technology to Cuisine (there’s also sections for Staff Picks, as well as a spell list of Staff Picks for Haiti). Clicking on one of these categories will bring up 20 recommended Twitter users. It appears that the order of the users presented has some randomness to it — I’ve had the order of the Technology section switch a few times as I played around with it.
The Suggested User List has long been controversial, because it effectively guarantees anyone on it hundreds of thousands of Twitter followers (disclosure: TechCrunch is on the list). But the list certainly has a valid purpose — it helps expose new users to interesting Twitter users (Twitter is pretty boring if you aren’t following anyone).
The old SUL would present 20 people, at random, from Twitter’s list of possible recommendations. It also allowed users to follow all of these recommendations at once. The new system has apparently removed this mass-follow ability, which may well cause a downturn in the rate at which members of the list get new followers. Granted, it’s still pretty easy to hit those Follow buttons next to every suggested user, but it takes much more effort than adding them all in one fell swoop.
Via Scobleizer.
A breakthrough in wearable computing lets researchers change ordinary cotton and polyester into electronic textiles that can double as rechargeable batteries. That means powering an iPod or cell phone could become as easy as plugging it into your tee shirt or jeans and charging the clothing overnight.
“Energy textiles will change the development of wearable electronics,” Liangbing Hu, one of the researchers from Stanford University involved in the project told Wired.com. “There are not that many solutions available for energy storage for wearable devices. Electronic textiles tries to solve that problem.”
Wearable electronics is an attempt to create a new category of devices that are flexible and lightweight such as wearable displays, embedded health monitors and textiles with electronics melded in. In case of textiles, though, most attempts, so far, to integrate electronics involve patching sensors and resistors on to existing fabric.
The latest attempt tries to bring the electronics to the molecular level. The researchers coated cellulose and polyester fibers with ‘ink’ made from single-walled carbon nanotubes. The nanotubes are electrically conductive carbon fibers barely 1/50,000 the width of a human hair.
The process of dyeing with this special ink is similar to that used for dyeing fibers and fabrics in the textile industry, they say. Details of the method were published in a paper in the ACS’ Nano Letters journal.
The coating makes the fibers highly conductive by turning them into porous conductors. The treated textiles can then be used as electrodes and standard textiles used as separators to creates fully stretchable supercapacitors. Ordinary capacitors are used to store energy. Supercapacitors can offer turbocharge that principle such that the capacitor can be charged and discharged virtually an unlimited number of times.
“If you have a high surface area, you can store a high amount of charges,” says Hu. “Since we coat carbon nanotubes on textile fibers, it increases the surface and allows for charge and discharge cycles up to one million times,” says Hu.
The electronic textiles produced by this method retain the flexibility and stretchability of regular cotton and polyester. They also kept their electronic properties despite simulated repeated laundering, say the researchers.
The next step is to combine it with inks of other materials that could help turn the fabric into wearable solar cells and batteries.
The researchers are also looking to use graphene, a form of carbon derived from graphite oxide, instead of carbon nanotubes. “Graphene can be much cheaper than nanotubes,” says Hu, “so alternative materials like that could significantly reduce the cost of energy textiles.”
See Also:
Photo: E-ink treated fabrics could help charge electronics/ Stanford University
Plenty of ink has been spilled detailing how wildly succesful Apple’s App Store has been, which now counts well over 100,000 applications. However, this huge number of apps presents a challenge: it’s hard to actually find interesting new apps when there are so many to choose from. Apple does its best to highlight quality applications in the store, and it offers a Genius feature, but that often leaves something to be desired. AppStoreHQ is a site that’s looking to help make app recommendations using a new source of data: Twitter. The site generates recommendations based on who is tweeting about iPhone apps, and can generate recommendations for you based on your own tweets.
The site looks at Twitter’s public stream, checking tweets for links back to the App Store. Every time someone links to an app, they treat that as a vote from that user. When you visit the site’s homepage, you can browse through the apps that are currently the hottest on Twitter or on the web (the latter is determined by apps with the most blog post mentions). Or, if you want personalised recommendations, you can tweet about an app or two that you enjoy. The one catch is that you have to include one of a few keywords like “iPhone” or “AppStoreHQ” in your tweet, otherwise the system won’t catch it. The service only resolves links with these keywords, because it would take a prohibitive amount of processing power to follow every short URL and Link to see if they’re linking to an iPhone app.
Once you’ve tweeted about a few apps, the system will make customized suggestions based on what other similar users have tweeted about. Obviously the more apps you tweet about, the better the recommendations become (which is also a good way for the service to grow virally). The system also takes into account a few other sources of data, including any apps you’ve Favorited on AppStoreHQ and which apps you’ve actually clicked through while browsing the site.
CEO Chris DeVore says that while the service could develop a sentiment engine to ensure that apps being linked to in tweets are actually being shared with a positive comment, it’s actually very rare for people to tweet a link to an app they don’t like, so they don’t do this processing.
I like the idea of using tweets for app recommendations — writing a tweet isn’t as involved as writing a blog post so the site will probably be able to get more data to analyze, and it will also be able to surface hot new apps quickly. That said, the algorithm will also likely have to put up with lots of spam from Twitter. And I think the AppStoreHQ layout could use some work, as its menu system seems clunky and bland.
AppStoreHQ has actually been around for a while, offering recommendations based on app links in blog posts. It also has a search engine for iPhone apps that it has white-labeled and is currently integrated in a number of other popular iPhone app news and community sites.
We’ve covered many other App Store recommendation services, including Chorus, Appolicious, AppsFire, and Appsaurus.
 BBC News (blog) | Microsoft Makes Web Browser More Secure Wall Street Journal Microsoft Corp. on Thursday released a software patch for its Internet Explorer Web browser that it says will plug a security hole believed to have been exploited in cyberattacks on Google Inc. and other companies in China. ... Microsoft patches IE, admits it knew of bug last August Browse safely with Internet Explorer Microsoft Promises Early Patch for IE Zero-Day |
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
The Bay Area News Project, a non-profit media organization providing hyper local news to the San Francisco area, has announced a deal to provide news to the New York Times. The content will be used for The New York Times’ local San Francisco editions on Friday and Saturday. The deal with the New York Times has been rumored to be in negotiations but was officially announced today.
The project, which was announced last year, has received $5 million in funding from financier Warren Hellman. The site, which has a staff of nearly 30 journalists, is also supported by KQED-FM (Though it appears that deal has ended) and University of California, Berkeley’s graduate school of journalism. The Project as also brought on former McKinsey partner Lisa Frazier as CEO and Jonathan Weber, the co-founder and editor in chief of The Industry Standard, as the site’s editor in chief.
The New York Times has a similar arrangement in Chicago with the nonprofit Chicago News Cooperative, a similar organization in theory to the Bay Area News Project. The Times recently made waves after announcing a new metered billing system yesterday. The exact details of the plan are unclear and its questionable whether the controversial move will actually bring revenue into the publication.
 Siliconrepublic.com | Bing May Become iPhone's Default Search Engine PC World Apple's relationship with Google is souring, which is the perfect opening for Microsoft when it comes to the iPhone. It's no secret that Apple and Microsoft have one of the stranger relationships in tech. While Microsoft has produced software such as ... Real-Time Search: 5 Alternatives to Google, Bing Apple/Google Turf Battle Rages On: Mobile Search on the Block Search and be damned |
A first peek at Google’s Q4 earnings report: Revenue in line and a nice earnings bump. The search giant reported revenue of $4.95 billion and earnings of $6.79 per share. The Street was looking for revenue of $4.9 billion and $6.50 in earnings per share, per Yahoo (YHOO) (I’ve also seen lower “consensus” numbers for EPS, in the $6.45-$6.48 range).
Google (GOOG) stock has lurched five percent lower in the first few minutes of after-hours trading, as investors digest the news. If you want to anthropomorphize the market, you might speculate that it’s bummed that CEO Eric Schmidt and company didn’t show a higher revenue lift. But if you’re keeping track, revenue is up 17 percent compared with last year, and up 12 percent from the previous quarter.
Here is Citigroup (C) analyst Mark Mahaney’s “cheatsheet” for those playing at home (click to enlarge):
And you can see the company’s profit and loss and balance sheet here.
Google will be using YouTube to livestream its earnings call, but I’ll be providing some annotation here starting at 4:30 Eastern. You can also check out the company’s accompanying slide presentation here, and here’s a chart it’s particularly proud of (click to enlarge):
I’m trying out a promising new liveblog tool, but please bear with me if there are bumps along the way.
On the call: CEO Eric Schmidt, CFO Patrick Pichette, product guy Jonathan Rosenberg, sales boss Nikesh Arora. No Larry or Sergey.
Schmidt declares that he’s very pleased with Q4: “An extraordinary end to a roller coaster year”
Schmidt: Clearly, we were right to start ramping up investments, and will continue to do so. Investing in people, investing in tech, along our “70/20/10″ rule: 70 percent in core products, 20 percent in new business like mobile/Android, and 10 percent in “long view” initiatives like commerce and social.
And of course, more M&A. Continuing pace of roughly one per month, some small, some big.
Pichette runs through the numbers in the release above. He reiterates Schmidt’s line about continuing investments.
Jonathan Rosenberg has a cold, but gets his message across. “We made some very hard decisions” to shut down some products to focus on winners. It’s our “more wood behind fewer arrows approach.” We’re focusing on DoubleClick integration, Android expansion and the Chrome OS. “YouTube, is in fact, monetizing well” and we hope our partners make money, too.
Obviously, going forward, we’re going to plow resources into search. But other stuff, too. Social, for instance. Not just social networking, but all of our products should be “social.” This can apply to search, local search, etc. Also focusing on commerce, whether people are making their purchases online or offline.
More Rosenberg: Mobile important, and so is moving enterprise to the cloud.
Arora: We improved throughout the year and Q4 was strong. Large companies like Staples (SPLS) and Volvo are directing an increasing portion of their spend online [as they're supposed to do].
Arora: Search ads are always a value in December! Costs go up but they get more effective because people buy more.
Arora: Brand marketers are increasing their spending, too. YouTube has had many successful brand campaigns. Have you seen Fox’s “Avatar” ads? They’re great. Other shoutouts for Sony (SNE) and American Express (AXP).
Arora: Most of the top networks have signed onto AdX ad exchange since we launched in the fall.
Time for Q&A.
Q: U.S. revenue had a big jump, but international didn’t accelerate as quickly. What gives?
Arora: In the U.S., we saw large advertisers shifting offline to online. Other markets have different issues; hence the different growth rate.
Q: Are we back to normal in regard to seasonal patterns? Also, can you talk about “materiality” of mobile?
Pichette: We won’t talk about mobile revenue in any concrete way.
Arora: There is some different performance by vertical. Finance, obviously, isn’t as strong as it used to be.
Q: Another question about mobile: Is Google trying to push revenue? Profitability? Also, please talk about China.
Rosenberg: Advertisers are starting to figure out what works on mobile. For instance, adding a phone number or an offer for mobile helps a lot.
Pichette: Regarding mobile, we want to drive innovation that in turn drives people to the Web, which is better for us. That’s the core engine of mobile.
Schmidt: “China stuff has been well-covered in the press.” The CEO then recounts the China story. “We’re in conversations with the Chinese government,” and our business has remained unchanged. “But in a reasonably short time, we’ll be making some changes there.” That said, we’d still like to be in China.
Missed a question. Apologies.
New Q: Please talk about outperformance of network business vs. owned and operated. Also, what accounts for higher marketing costs?
Pichette: Nothing to talk about re: network versus O&O. Re expenses, we said we were going to ramp up investment and we put in more there because we can track the results and ROI.
Arora: Yep, some of that money was to support consumer launches.
Q: You said search increased five times on mobile. So what does that mean for revenue per search? Also, please talk more about increased spending on marketing.
Pichette: We’re really pleased with the marketing experiments we’re running.
Rosenberg: Re mobile: New formats, targeting tools and reporting we’re giving mobile advertisers is making a huge difference. But I won’t answer your question about revenue.
Missed another question here.
YouTube monetization: Can you give us some metrics on how much inventory you’re selling?
Arora: Nope. But it has “gone from being a nice-to-have” to essential.
Pichette: Home page nearly sold out in Q4. Hope that’s useful.
Can you break out ad spending by advertiser size?
Arora: Large advertisers are moving online, which is good. Retail was strong in Q4. We’re working with smaller advertisers to “bring them into the fray.” But the discrepancy so far has been mainly seasonal.
Can you rank your core business in terms of growth potential? Also, what’s up with you and Apple (AAPL)?
Schmidt: We’ve been saying for a while that display is a big opportunity. One story you haven’t seen so far is how successful we’ve been in display, but that will come out in 2010 [Note to PR staff: Start pitching!]
And obviously mobile is small now but will grow quickly.
“With respect to apple, it’s probably better to say” …. that as a former board member “I have a special spot for Apple in my heart.” They’re very well run company and “they have some very good stuff coming” strong competitor etc etc.
Schmidt on Nexus One: What it is really about is a new way of buying a phone. Nexus One itself is the first in a series of examples where you can buy the phone online and pick your carrier.
Is Bing having an impact on cost-per-click?
Rosenberg: We think out CPCs are generally not affected by competitors. Prices are set by buyers.
Can you talk about Nexus One’s impact on margin?
Pichette. Not really. We want to innovate, etc. Nexus One will have its own margin and that’s how we’re focused on building the business.
On mobile: We’ve seen third-party data that iPhone could be 50 percent of mobile traffic. Does that make sense to you? Also, said Apple relationship is “stable.” So what are the odds that you’re going to continue to provide search on the iPhone?
Schmidt: We won’t talk about the market share of Apple. And we won’t “speculate about any deals of any kind, true, not true, rumored, not rumored.”
Given that new display products are so great, is there any notion that people are moving dollars from search to display?
Schmidt: Advertisers “don’t shift, they add.” They might maximize search to maximize revenue and they might spend on display for long-term growth, branding, etc.
Pichette thanks Googlers listening for all their hard work. There’s an auxilary call at 6 pm Eastern with Pichette and Rosenberg, but I won’t be able to cover that one.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Google Just announced earnings for the fourth quarter. Revenues were up 17 percent to $6.7 billion, while non-GAAP earnings increased 35 percent to $2.2 billion, or 6.79 per share. That is well above the analyst consensus of $6.50 a share. The slides are above.
Revenues for the full year ended up being $23.65 billion, up from $21.8 billion in 2008. Net income for 2009 was $6.5 billion.
Google’s revenue in the quarter was broken down 66 percent (or $4.4 billion) from its own sites and 31 percent (or $2 billion) from AdSense revenues across its advertising network. The other 3 percent came from licensing and other businesses. While the Google’s ad revenue on its own sites increased 16 percent, AdSense revenues grew an even faster 21 percent.
Paid clicks on ads were up 13 percent annually and up 9 percent from the third quarter of 2009. The average cost per click was up 5 percent annually, and 2 percent sequentially.
The company ended the year with $24.5 billion in cash and 19,835 full-time employees (170 more people than on September 30, 2009).
My notes from the live conference call are below.
CEO Eric Schmidt:
Overall very pleased with performance. We are back in business full blast. Investing heavily. Excited to continue to reinvent search. Doing acquisitions at pace of one a month.
Jonathan Rosensweig:
Our strategy in 2009 was to double down on our core, search, advertising and display. Also wanted to invest in Chrome, [Android, other new products]. Internally we called this the “More wood behind fewer arrows” approach.
AdWords launched a new front end
Android started with 1 device, now at 20
Doubelclick now fully integrated, display ramping nicely.
Launched Chrome OS.
We saw a lot of businesses go to the cloud
YouTube is monetizing well
Most importantly, search is performing well. Also launched music search and realtime search.
In 20101 we will be investing. We will pour a lot into search. Key is time to result. How fast can we get a user to result. Also more types of ads.
Beyond search and search ads, a few major trends transforming the Internet.
The first is social. When you say social, people think of social networks, but all of the Web is becoming social. You will trust a restaurant review more from a friend, so maybe it should have a higher ranking, but only for you.
Also people researching shopping online more.
Personalizations, mobile. We think there is the potential to make the mobile Web better than the PC Web.
Organization are moving to the cloud not only because it is cheaper but because it is a better way to do things.
Q&A
Q: Sequential growth is similar to 2007. Are overall search spending trends back to normal? Also materiality of mobile?
A: We won’t comment on mobile. In general, you see throughout second half of 2009 a recovery. Finance is not as strong as other areas. Make progress with all the other verticals.
Q: Could you rank key monetization changes you made in 4Q. How do you think about mobile, will it drive P&L>
Jonathan: Quality Qs. Q4 tends to be a modest quarter for us. We try to freeze the launches after Thanksgiving to give advertisers stability during the holidays. RPM was stable. All Advertisers are on AdWords 3, makes them more effective in their biding efforts.
the main thing in mobile is advertisers are getting better figuring out what works on mobile, including a phone number or address is increasing clickthrough rates.
A: two pronged strategy on mobile. Driving product innovations, Goggles, Voice navigations, that drives monetization.
Schmidt: the China stuff has been covered. to review, we reported there was a cyber attack on Google, still under investigation, we made technical changes to prevent a future attack, also found monitoring of civil rights, third, Google will no longer be willing to apply the censorship rules in China. Our business is not changed yet. We will change that soon. {i.e. still censored results for now]
Q: you mentioned 5X increase in mobile search. What kind of revenue per search are you getting?
Jonathan: The new formats, the targeting tools and the reporting we are giving to advertisers is making a difference. Click to call, letting advertiser target specific high-end devices or carriers, so seeing improved monetization across mobile.
Q: How are the new ad formats doing?
A: Ad formats we launched in Q4 have been very successful.
Jonathan: try typing Sears into Google. You’ll see site links, Deal of the day, Tools section, better experience for both the advertiser and the user.
Q: Updated metrics o how much of YouTube is being monetized. before you said it had tripled.
A: YouTube has gone from a nice ti have to an essential part of a media campaign. Homepage was nearly sold out in Q4, running ads in 20 countries worldwide, to give you a perspective on how successful YouTube has been.
Q: Ad spending trends by advertising size?
A: Larger advertisers continue to increase spending, retailers was strong during the holidays. Continue to work with smaller advertisers, a seasonal issue where we see larger advertisers outperform smaller ones.
Q: Rank your no-search businesses in terms of revenue and growth potential.
A: Depends on whether you look at absolute growth or relative. Smaller ones are growing faster. We have said is that our next huge business is display. If I were to talk about absolute numbers that would be No. 1. But smaller ones growing faster. No. 1 there is mobile. We have a lot of evidence that people are moving towards data-friendly mobile devices quite quickly. 2010 will be a year of significant mobile revenue growth.
In terms of Apple, as a former board member I have a special place in my heart. We have some things coming up with them, but also compete.
Q: Do you need to diversify away from advertising revenues. Mobile strategy is perplexing, network partners and Nexus One.
Schmidt: We are not immune to global economic trends. I think we fared better than others. We are trying to use GPS data to target by location and have a lot of initiatives, but the biggest area will be in display. We have quiet a healthy enterprise business which will grow rapidly over the next few years. We will be one of the leaders there.
I think there has been a lot of confusion about that. What the Nexus One is rally about is a new way to purchase a phone. Nexus One is the first of a long line. You will see other manufacturers. you can buy and provision a phone.
Q: Is Bing having an effect on cost per click? Also taxes?
A: We think our CPCs generally are not impacted by what other competitors do. They are set by an auction model between customers.
Q: what will Nexus One Margin be?
A: we don’t track margins for businesses. [measure success in other ways, the margin will be what it will be]
Q: TAC issues, how big is display today?
A: TAC trending down due to mix issues. In the case of display, the few facts we shared already are worth mentioning. It is a $17B industry. TV industry is $117B industry, shifting to the Internet, So no doubt a huge pie to go after. We don’t comment on specifics of our market share, but a big focus for us with a lot of runway.
Q: We are seeing from third party data that iPhone is 50% of mobile traffic is that what you are seeing? Can you give us sense of percentage of advertisers
Schmidt: We are not going to speculate market share of Apple’s mobile products. As far as I can tell our relationship with Apple is very stable.
Q: Ad shifts between search and display?
Schmidt: My sense is they don’t shift, they add. We do it better than anyone else and continue to win all of those deals.
If you’ve ever tried to listen in on a Google earnings call on the web, it’s kind of a pain. That’s especially true if you use a Mac because Google insists that you use either Real Player (which is awful on the Mac) or Windows Media Player (which doesn’t work on a Mac). Of course, you could always call into an actual phone number, but who does that anymore? Thankfully, for its Q4 2009 earnings being announced this afternoon, Google has made things easier.
Gone are the options to listen via Real Player or Windows Media Player. Instead, you have one option: Webcast on YouTube. Google has set up a YouTube account, GoogleIR (investor relations) that will host the earnings call and the follow-up Q&A session. All you need is a web browser with Flash installed to listen in. Currently, you’ll heard the traditional classical music that plays while everyone waits for the call to start.
And while it won’t be clear until it actually starts, it looks like Google could be taking advantage of the video aspect of this webcast as well. Google always releases slides alongside its earnings numbers to better illustrate results. It looks as if Google may run these slides during the call for a more interactive experience. Again, it’s not yet clear if that will actually happen, but that would be a good way to better illustrate what they are discussing — and a good use of YouTube for this type of thing.
Google’s earnings will be announced at 1:30 PM PT today. We’ll be listening in and following up with analysis. Most accounts have Google beating estimates relatively easily, despite the latest situations surrounding China and possibly their growing rivalry with Apple.
Is Howard Stern going to return to terrestrial radio? That seems highly unlikely given his obvious affinity for the…permissiveness of satellite. But the radio show host isn’t above threatening to return to earth as part of his contract negotiations.
Stern said today that he has been approached by several “regular” radio execs about returning to his original turf when his five-year $500 million contract with Sirius XM (SIRI) expires.
“I actually have an offer,” Stern said, according to a report on The Wrap. “Well, not a bona fide offer, but people have been making them.”
Stern’s remarks today follow a public call-and-response negotiation with Sirius CEO Mel Karmazin that began last fall. “It will start with Howard feeling that he is working too hard and doing too many shows and not making enough money,” Karmazin told attendees of the Reuters Media Summit in November. “Our side would say, ‘We want you to do more, and get less money.’ The hope would be that we would come out with Howard staying with our service.”
Stern, of course, is angling for the exact opposite. “I don’t think I’m going to be re-signing. I know exactly what I want to do here,” he said last year, referring to a less busy schedule. “And I don’t know if it would interest [Sirius.]“
Given the size of Stern’s audience and the availability of much of Sirius’s other content on the Internet, my guess is that it would.
Section: Web, Online Music/Video
YouTube has just launched a complete redesign of their video playback page. If you want to try it out, you will have to opt in. Alternatively, you can see the changes from the screenshot below this post.
One main feature removed from the old design is the 5-star rating system. The new system now involves “Like”-ing and “Thumbs down”-ing (Dislike) a video. Liking a video adds it to your favorites, while a “Thumbs down” (Dislike) really does nothing apart from telling YouTube that you don’t like that video. I find this system rather crude; YouTube should have separated “Like” and “Favorite”. Some people may want to “Like” a video, but not add it to their “Favorites”.
Some other changes are:
The design isn’t final yet as YouTube is still gathering feedback from its users. What do you think of the new design?
Read [YouTube Blog] Via [Mashable]
Full Story » | Written by Cheng Hung for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article »
Take a deep breath and exhale. Feeling a little tight around the middle? Your corset could be sending you a message about air pollution.
Designer Kristin O’Friel has created a garment that reacts to the carbon dioxide levels in the environment and offers physical feedback by tightening the bodice in relation to air quality.
“I wanted to create an experience that changed our perception of environmental data,” says O’Friel, “by making a wearable device that engaged with this information in a direct and tangible way.”
The CO2RSET has a carbon dioxide sensor sewn into the garment. It responds to CO2 readings by tightening or loosening itself when the levels of the gas in the atmosphere increase or decrease, respectively. O’Friel designed it as a student in the Interactive Telecommunications Program at New York University’s Tisch School of Arts.
O’Friel says she chose a corset because it cinches the waist and forces wearers to breathe shallowly. “It’s contextually appropriate as the wearable interface to air quality,” she says.
The corset uses a TGS4161 sensor from a company called Figaro and mini gear motors from Solarbotics for the actuation.
The garment may not be very practical, but its a fun way to introduce the idea of wearable computing and open it up to possibilities.
Take a closer look at the corset:
More at Kristin O’Friel’s Flickr stream
See Also:
[via UberGizmo]
Photos: Kristin O’Friel
Section: Gadgets / Other, ebooks
Finally, Amazon has either read a few of my posts or looked into some economics: Amazon is offering free Kindle ebook readers to some pre-qualified customers. These customers are enticed to purchase the Kindle, then if they find it not to their liking, request a refund and keep the Kindle. The endgame is content, not hardware.
It appears that Amazon is being extremely selective, choosing only folks who have a history with Amazon of buying books over the years. A couple of books a month seems to be the common thread between those who’ve seen this offer. It seems that being a Prime member helps as well.
Amazon is hedging it’s bets: by picking folks who love books, chances are good they’ll love the Kindle. If they are a loyal Amazon customer, the time and effort to call or email for a refund might be too much. Even if these screen users get a refund, their buying habits suggest they’ll keep buying books, perhaps for the Kindle and Amazon recoups the outlay.
I’ve been suggesting a similar scheme for some time. We Americans seem to dislike big upfront payments. We can justify smaller monthly payments a lot easier. The MPAA should have spent their money on buying iPods for every man, woman, and child rather then on lawyers; as their fortunes would have risen more by providing everyone a way to get content. Amazon is getting over the early-adopter tax and moving on to mass adoption.
Is this all about Apple’s imminent tablet perhaps taking a bite out of Kindle’s niche? Perhaps, but I see this as a better way to reach the masses, rather than just loyal Applites gobbling up the latest shiny thing. At least for the first few iterations.
Read [TechCrunch]
Full Story » | Written by JG Mason for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article »
Whoo! Looks like free turn-by-turn navigation wasn’t the only good news to come out of Nokia’s press announcement earlier today.
In a once-in-a-blue-moon event, the guys over at Pocket-Lint asked for details about when Nokia might be launching new hardware and actually managed to get an answer. According to Nokia UK managing director Mark Loughran, Nokia will be launching something new on January 26th – just one day before Apple launches their something new.
Alas, the date is all they could squeeze out of him. When the sentries PR flacks got wind that Mark was spilling the beans on something unannounced, they appeared from a cloud of smoke to shut the conversation down. Oh well!
Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
For the average person, a bunch of seemingly meaningless text on a 2-color screen is by no means the definition of excitement. But you.. you.. you’re no average person. You’re a gadget lover – and tucked away behind the glare spot on that screen is a gem to be held close to the chest until the end of time. Or at least until next week, when we’re all distracted by something else.
The screen you’re looking at is Verizon’s Cellebrite inventory system. Lurking behind that flash is a passing mention of the Motorola Calgary (otherwise known as the DROID Devour) — an Android-powered handset which neither Motorola nor Verizon has officially confirmed yet. You can think of it as the Droid’s younger, ganglier sister; it’s a bit strange looking, a lesser camera (3 megapixels instead of 5), and Motorola’s social-network-centric BLUR user interface.
As mentioned, Verizon’s still keeping mum on this handset, so there’s no word yet on pricing or availability. With it popping up in the inventory systems, however, it’s probably a safe bet that it’s not more than a few weeks away.
[Android Central via IntoMobile]
Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
Ever since RIM got their act together with the BlackBerry Storm 2, we’ve been pretty excited about their new-found interest in touchscreens. When word got out not too long ago that RIM was cracking away on a half-touchscreen/half-keyboard hybrid handset (think BlackBerry Bold, with a touchscreen), we started getting all hot around the collar. Word on the street (the cell phone rumor street. It’s a tough place.) indicated the handset’s nickname was “Dakota”.
Aaaaaand here it is – or at least an early prototype which the guys over at CrackBerry say has been scrapped in lieu of something “nicer”. You know, I think I’d be just fine with the one pictured up above – but hey, bloggers can’t be choosers.
Crunch Network: TechCrunch obsessively profiling and reviewing new Internet products and companies
Chinese knockoffs of the MacBook Air could actually be a compelling option for those desiring the razor-thin form factor of the subnote without paying the premium.
Pictured above and below, clones of the MacBook Air are appearing for sale everywhere in Shenzhen, China, according to MIC Gadget. They feature the guts of a standard netbook: a 1.66GHz Intel Atom processor, a 3-cell battery, a 160GB hard drive, 1GB RAM and 802.11b/g/n Wi-Fi. What sets the knockoffs apart from netbooks is the 13.3-inch, 1280-by-800-pixel LED backlit screen, which is the same size as the MacBook Air’s. They’ll only cost you about $300 — a hefty discount compared to Apple’s MacBook Air, which starts at $1,500.
There’s even some stuff the knockoff has that the original Air doesn’t: an SD card slot, Ethernet port and HDMI out.
Of course, the knock-off is cheaper partly because you don’t get the aluminum enclosure of the real thing; you get a white plastic simulacrum body instead. Plus, the Apple glows in different colors as opposed to the original white. But that’s not too bad: These differences make the knockoff look special (from these pictures at least). Imagine all the head turns you’ll get at the coffee shop.
Because the insides are so different from the original MacBook Air, it’d be more fair to compare the knockoff to the slew of netbooks available on the market. Want a cheap portable with a bigger screen and larger keyboard? This looks like a really attractive option compared to the crampy 10-inch netbooks out there.
The knockoff isn’t shipping with Mac OS X, but rather Windows XP. Question is, can it be turned into a Hackintosh? We’ll try to get one just to see. We found one at DHGate.com for $325, and we just might order one for testing and review.
See Also:
Via Cult of Mac
Photos: MIC gadget
 Telegraph.co.uk | Study: Hacking Passwords Easy As 123456 PC World If you are using "123456" as your password it is past time to stop. Same if you are using the always popular "Password" to protect your account. Those easy-to-hack passwords were the top and fourth most-popular from among 32 million ... User Passwords Make Hackers' Job Easy: Report Users still make hacking easy with weak passwords RockYou Hack Reveals the Worst 20 Passwords |
Crying baby? There’s an App for that! (Boo!) It’s called Cry Translator, and it takes the various shouts and screams of your baby and “translates” them to proper language.
The App, which costs $17.99 $29.99 (sorry, got Pounds and Dollars mixed up), is the brainchild of a Spanish doctor.
Anyhow, this all works because researchers have pretty much figured out what a baby’s crying means. Turns out there’s five types of cries—and these cries are the same across all of humanity, from Texas to Japan, from Portugal to Indonesia—and they indicate whether or not the baby is hungry, tired, stressed, bored, or annoyed. I did not know that.
The App claims to be 96 percent accurate.
Anyone in the audience have a baby they can try this on?
via The Sun
Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors
Section: Gadgets / Other, ebooks
With the wide range of available ebook readers, and the allegedly looming Apple Tablet, Amazon seems to be looking for a way to make the Kindle even more appealing. Of course, it could always try lowering the price or something of that nature, but that still makes the Kindle the same reader it’s always been. Amazon looks to make the Kindle more appealing by adding in more functionality.
Amazon is opening up the Kindle for developers to create apps. The apps that come for the Kindle might not be as impressive as the ones for the iPhone/iPod touch or Android, but will play to the strengths of an ebook reader. The example given by Amazon is from Handmark, which is creating a more interactive version of the Zagat restaurant guide that will allow users to search for places to eat more easily than they could in an ebook. Amazon has also distributed the development to EA Games, so when the Kindle’s app store launches it wouldn’t be surprising to find some version of Tetris.
The beta of the program will launch next month, with finished apps being put on a waiting list for the service when it does launch. There is no release date yet, though if Amazon can get it out before the rumored summer launch of the Apple Tablet, it might take away a tiny bit of Apple’s hype. With this release, it’ll be interesting to see if the next version of the Kindle will be optimized to run apps better than the Kindle 2.
Read [Amazon] Read [Kindle Developmet Kit]
Full Story » | Written by Shawn Ingram for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article »
FROM GAMERTELL - Microsoft is in talks with Disney for what some think can be a deal to include cable programming on the Xbox…
MORE »
Full Story » | Written by NEWS for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article »
Ion audio, a company “known” for producing glowing drumsticks and electronic drums (and also the terrible Twin Video camera) has bent its ample skills to making a huge add-on keyboard for the tiny iPhone. The inevitably-named iType is battery powered and has a slot into which the iPhone can nestle and recharge its own battery.
But look at it. Resembling an early word processor with a tiny four-line screen, the iType doesn’t even raise the iPhone to make it easier to read. With an accessory of this size, why not just take you MacBook with you? Ion seems to agree, as the iType exists now as nothing more than a phantom in Google’s cache. Possibly the site is being readied and redesigned for this sure-fire hit. Or perhaps Ion took the iType out the back and put a lead slug into the base of its skull, and these cached pages are the virtual equivalent of a careless footprint left at the crime scene.
We all want a physical keyboard for when we need to bang out an emergency article on the iPhone, but it should be smaller than a laptop and have a vague sense of design at least. The iType looks like somebody drunkenly sketched it on a napkin and then, somehow, that sketch was fed into a 3D printer.
Ion iType Transforms iPhone Into an Ultra-Portable Desktop Computer [ION, Google cache]
Wow! iPhone gets a full-size, QWERTY keyboard. Will Apple crush it? [Raw Feed]
Section: Audio, Portable Audio, Reviews, Peep Shows, Features
Despite the fact that this will further brand me as a Zune lover and open me up for even more ridicule from from fellow Gadgetell bloggers, I will go on with this review as planned…
Up for review is a PixelSkin case for the Zune HD, which is made by Speck. The PixelSkin for the Zune HD is available in black (as shown in the images) and retails for $24.95.
What can I really say? Its a case and it protects my Zune HD. But to add just a little to that thought, I would say that the PixelSkin case works well. It is easy to slip on and off, and also still allows the user to easily use the on/off button (on top) as well as the side volume controls and the dock connector and headphone jack along the bottom. Basically, the case offers protection without sacrificing any features of the Zune HD. But in addition, the case is made out of a soft rubbery material and has the pixel look, which adds a little thickness, but also some grip. Personally I found that useful while running and holding the Zune HD in my hand. Plus, I felt just a little better knowing that should I trip and fall, which would cause my Zune HD to go flying that it was well protected.
I like the protection it offers, I like the look and I like the price. And with that I would not hesitate to recommend the Speck PixelSkin case for the Zune HD.
Product [Speck Products]
Full Story » | Written by Robert Nelson for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article »
This is Samuel Magethe, and with him is his home-made motorized bike. Samuel lives in Nairobi, and bought the bicycle and engine separately before marrying them into this wonderful form. It looks a lot like the very first motorcycles. Samuel has been using his machine for two years.
The engine comes from Japanese company Adtec, and is sold in downtown Nairobi by bike dealer Julius. Erik Hersman of Afrigadget, who shot this video, tells us that the engine is a 48cc two-stroke that will push the bike to 25mph, and runs for 70 Km on a liter of gas, or 165 mpg. The range is double that, as the gas tank up top holds two liters.
You could buy the bike and engine together, for around $200, or the motor on its own for a mere $135. They are understandably popular in Kenya, but I imagine legal problems over licensing and road use would kill these immediately in the US. A shame, as a cargo-bike thus equipped would be an impossibly cheap replacement for at least one of your cars.
Motorized Bicycles in Nairobi [Afrigadget]
See Also:
 CBC.ca | Climate Science Panel Apologizes for Himalayan Error New York Times Leaders of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change apologized yesterday for making a "poorly substantiated" claim that Himalayan glaciers could disappear by 2035. The finding was included in the group's 2007 ... Sloppy Mistake on Glacier Disappearance Chills UN Climate Panel Climate chief admits error over Himalayan glaciers Did IPCC also get sea levels wrong? |
The Boxee Box has always promised to bring the best content we can find on our computers in one slick interface on a TV. That’s what Boxee has been doing since it’s inception, and the result so far has been great. Aside from content streamed over the Internet for free, there hasn’t been a lot of legal ways to get of content using the software, though it looks like that could change this summer.
Boxee has announced it’s upcoming Payment Platform, an easy way to purchase content for your Boxee set-up. Using the platform users will be able to buy channels, shows, movies or pay-per-view. The content will be controlled by the content partners, with Boxee taking a small cut of the profits (said only to be less than standard 30 percent). The goal of the platform is to make the Internet the fourth major method of delivering premium content (the other three being cable, satellite and IPTV).
The Payment Platform is said to be simple, requiring only one click on the remote. There are no partners announced yet, though Boxee does mention that is in talks with content providers both large and small. If the company can manage to get a large number of content providers, or at least interesting ones, the Boxee Box could become an even better replacement for a cable subscription when it is released.
Read [Boxee]
Full Story » | Written by Shawn Ingram for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article »
Imagine a video camera with lenses front and back, a camera which could shoot both interviewee and interviewer simultaneously. Imagine then being able to cut back and forth between them, with everything, including stereo sound, in perfect sync.
Imagine now that you had made such a machine, and then crippled it, turning it into a novelty device that puts a feed of you, the camera operator, in the corner of all your footage, grinning and gurning in a repulsive, annoying video commentary. It’s like the most moronic DVD-extra commentary track, only worse, because you can see it.
That camera exists. The Twin Video has cameras firing in both directions, along with a pair of mics. As you shoot, you can choose which of the images is set picture-in-picture and which is the full-sized master. You can also split the screen to show both. Examples of use: rollercoasters, merry-go-rounds (carousels) and “interviews” conducted by narcissists.
Otherwise, the Twin Video looks very similar to a Flip, or – stylistically – the Kodak Zx1. It records to SD or SDHC, hooks up to a computer via USB and has a built-in, rechargeable battery. The price is still undecided, and the camera should be in stores in the first half of this year.
Twin Video [Ion via IT World]
Section: Communications, Cellphones, Cellular Providers, Smartphones, Mobile
The embargo seems to have lifted and that means the web has recently been flooded with reviews for the soon-to-be released Palm Pre Plus. Of course, we already know that the Palm Pre Plus is going to be available with Verizon Wireless as of January 25, but thanks to this selection of reviews we can see if it is indeed going to be worth the money. And I will say that I picked and read these reviews carefully because despite previously feeling like the Palm Pre, or more accurately webOS was stalled I may end up grabbing this once its available. My reason for purchase, not so much to have a Pre or webOS device but because I can have that along with a device that has MiFi like Internet sharing all in one.
There isn’t enough to call this an entirely new series of Palm phones, or even a Palm Pre 2. The Pre Plus improved on the Pre in a few important regards, don’t get me wrong, but it’s essentially the same phone we’ve seen for the last six months. You won’t notice the increased memory unless you’re a habitual window-opener, nor will you appreciate the keyboard unless you really had a problem with the previous one.
As you can probably tell, it’s not a sea change for Palm with the Pre Plus and Pixi Plus. In fact, it’s barely a bump at all. If you’ve just purchased one of these devices on Sprint, you may feel a little sting, but don’t let it get to you—they’re not markedly better on Verizon—especially the Pixi.
Is the Verizon Pre Plus a must-have upgrade? For existing Pre owners, probably not, thanks to incremental rather than revolutionary changes. Those who’ve considered a Pre – or webOS – but been put off by the keyboard feel or the limited storage, however, should definitely take a look at the Pre Plus. Our typing felt faster and we had fewer concerns about side loading reasonable catalogs of music onto the smartphone. Lastly, webOS is faster and more responsive thanks to the extra RAM doesn’t hurt either.
The Palm Pre Plus is the flagship for Palm, then, but can it legitimately be called a flagship for Verizon? Almost, but not quite yet. The key is Mobile Hotspot, which is awesome and one of the best reasons for recommending the Palm Pre Plus to a business user. Palm already has pretty decent push email and Exchange support - all they need now is full Document editing (and perhaps some battery life improvement) to make the case that the Palm Pre Plus is amongst the best business smartphones on the market.
So the Pre Plus is basically a good value, even though we wish it had more horsepower. And this smart phone will get even better once webOS 1.4 rolls out next month, which will offer welcome features like video recording and full Flash support.
While AT&T continues to promise that tethering on the iPhone is just around the corner, Verizon and Palm have launched what is quite possibly the slickest tethering solution to ever grace a mobile handset. The $40 monthly price tag seems a bit steep considering the 5 gigabyte cap, but that same 5 gigabyte plan would set you back $60 if you instead opted for a MiFi.
At this price, it’s certainly not for everyone – but if you’ve got a need for multi-person mobile broadband and were already looking to pick up a Pre Plus or Pixi Plus, it’s your best bet.
It was interesting to note that most of the reviews pointed out that this is mostly the same phone as what Sprint already has available. Well, the same phone with the addition of more internal storage and also the fact that the hardware “home” button was removed. And one other noticeable difference is that the Verizon Pre includes the touchstone compatible backing, but of course, you are still required to purchase the Touchstone separately.
All things considered, these reviews read mostly the same as what we have been reading about the Palm Pre in the past. In fact, it seems the one major difference that Verizon can offer with the Pre is that they have that special app for sharing your 3G connection in a MiFi like manner. And just as an FYI, that monthly service is going to be $40 per month, which sounds expensive considering its in addition to your monthly phone service, but at the same time it will save you some money if you have (or want) a MiFi because that service would be $70 a month.
Full Story » | Written by Robert Nelson for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article »
Last year in Britain, 4,500 USB sticks were left in pockets of clothes that were sent to the dry cleaner. Don’t laugh, we’ve all done it: I even managed to run an iPod Nano through the wash (without killing it). The survey, paid for by data security company Credant Technologies, apparently highlights the dangers of putting sensitive company data onto the little thumb drives.
The thinking goes that absent-minded employees with dirty clothes could fall afoul of the UK’s Data Protection Act and incur fines of up to £500,000 ($813,000). The news isn’t all bad, though: the number of drives left in pockets has halved since last year.
Lest these new figures threaten Credant’s marketing plan (why else would you commission a survey other than to prove a point you had already decided upon?), the company has a new spin. Perhaps all this sensitive information is being loaded onto netbooks and smartphones? The horror. Remember when the iPod, with its then-capacious hard drive, was the garlic and stake to the corporate IT security team, banned from workplaces to protect precious noughts and ones from being spirited away? This is the same thing over again.
And anyhow, thumb-drives are the pocket lint of the modern day. Dry cleaners of course rummage through your pockets, and while loose change will always be a welcome perk, we imagine that the USB stick has lost all novelty and will simply be tossed away as if it were a hardened, desiccated Kleenex.
Data hung out to dry as 4,500 USBs are left in Dry Cleaners [Credant. Thanks, Yvonne!]
FROM APPLETELL - The Space Bar—a simple shelf with a built in USB hub—is both sleek and useful. And just to top it off, it’s priced reasonably, too.
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Full Story » | Written by NEWS for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article »
Nokia’s own headline sums this story up pretty well: “Navigation on your Nokia. For free. Forever.”
That’s right. If anyone thought that Garmin, TomTom and any other standalone GPS makers were already in trouble after Apple allowed turn-by-turn navigation on the iPhone, now the world’s No. 1 phone maker is giving away a full suite for any compatible Nokia handset, anywhere in the world. And not only is the application itself free: so are those usually lucrative maps and updates.
Free is fantastic and all, but what’s really important here is the fact that the maps are stored on the phone, not trickled to your device from a network. See, when you download Google maps on an iPhone or Android device, you’re at the mercy of of your cell signal. No bars, no map. But Nokia’s model is the same as a dedicated GPS unit: The maps are pre-loaded onto the phone and reside there permanently. In a place where the network doesn’t reach? No problem, maps are available. Don’t want to squander your data plan? No problem, maps don’t suck up kilobytes.
If you have Nokia smartphone, you can grab the download today from the Ovi store (not every handset is supported — the N900 is not on the list, for instance). Along with AGPS support, you get driving and walking directions, Lonely Planet and Michelin guides, weather updates and companion desktop (browser-based) software to manage and search routes form the comfort of a big keyboard. Best of all, the maps are available offline, unlike Google Maps on the iPhone.
Seriously, who would want to be in the satnav-selling game right now? If I had TomTom or Garmin shares (and I don’t), I would be selling them right now.
Ovi Maps [Nokia]
Amazon has announced that it will open up the Kindle e-reader to third party developers, allowing applications, or what Amazon calls “active content”, to run on the device.
What kind of apps could run in the low-fi Kindle? Well, you won’t be getting Monkey Ball, but interactive books, travel guides with locations data, RSS readers and anything that brings text to the device would be a good candidate. This could even include magazine and newspaper subscriptions.
The key is the revenue split. Right now Amazon takes a big chunk of the selling price of Kindle e-books. The terms of the new Kindle Development Kit (KDK) specify a 70:30 split, with the large part going to the developer. This is the same as the iTunes App Store, which is surely no coincidence — with an expected e-reading Apple tablet announcement next week, Amazon may be showing its hand now to pre-empt Apple.
It might appear that Amazon is going head-to-head with Apple on this, but we see it a little differently. Apple sells hardware, and while the App Store brings in a nice chunk of change, it is there primarily to sell more iPhones and iPods. Amazon sells books, and the Kindle is a way to make sure you buy Amazon’s e-books. That’s why there is a Kindle app for the iPhone, and why there will be a Kindle app on the tablet: it benefits both companies.
“Active content” will certainly make the Kindle more compelling, especially against other e-readers, although it will also make the Kindle more distracting. One of the nice things about an e-reader is that you can’t use it to check your email every five minutes. Or perhaps you can. The KDK allows the use of the wireless 3G connection. If the application uses less than 100KB per month, the bandwidth comes for free. If it uses more, there is a charge of $0.15 per MB which can (and surely will) be passed on to the customer as a monthly charge.
This model could, interestingly, also make its way into Apple’s tablet. Instead of trying to sell us yet another data plan, the tablet could have a Kindle-style free 3G connection used only for buying iTunes Store content, with the bandwidth price built in to the purchase. That is just speculation, however.
What we are sure of is that the next year will be an interesting one, and the e-book is set to take off in the same way that the MP3 took off before it. The question is, who will be making the iPod of e-books? Given its relatively low price, its appeal to an older, book buying demographic and its ascetic simplicity, the surprise winner might actually be the Kindle.
KDK Limited Beta Coming Next Month [Amazon]
![Screen shot 2010-01-21 at [ January 21 ] 1.38.16 AM](http://www.mobilecrunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/Screen-shot-2010-01-21-at-January-21-1.38.16-AM.png "Screen shot 2010-01-21 at [ January 21 ] 1.38.16 AM")
For the past few days, Nokia has been trying to get everyone excited about.. something. They piqued our interests by sending out press event invites (for separate events in the UK and the US, no less), then revved the hype machine with a good ol’ fashion countdown timer.
The US announcement is still a few hours away, but they just pulled back the curtain over in the UK — and while we can’t say for certain, I’m pretty sure the talk of the event will be the same on this side of the pond. The big secret? Free turn-by-turn navigation is now available for roughly 20 million Nokia handsets around the world.
To dive a bit deeper into that “20 million.. handsets” number, we’re talking about users speaking 46 different languages across 74 different countries. If Google didn’t kill the standalone GPS market when they announced free navigation for the Android platform, Nokia may very well have just pushed the knife that last inch.
Some of the features of the new, free Ovi Maps with Navigation:
So why did Nokia suddenly decide to make turn-by-turn navigation free to anyone rocking a compatible handset? Besides making the somewhat antiquated S60 platform that much more competitive, it’s all a part of Nokia’s plan to snatch up a chunk of the location-based service market before things get too crowded. We had been hearing rumblings from our sources that Nokia would be putting a focus on this space, and I get the feeling this isn’t their only move – we’ll check in with our sources and see what else we can dig up.
In the mean while, anyone toting a Nokia X6, N97 mini (Note: Not the standard N97 just yet), E72, E55, E52, 6730 classic, 6710 Navigator, 5800 Xpressmusic, 5800 Navigation Edition, or 5230 can grab the new Ovi Maps with Navigation app here.
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